The Thing (2011)

The Thing Synopsis

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they're infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.

When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

The Thing serves as a prelude to John Carpenter's classic 1982 film of the same name.

Let’s be clear about something right away: Germany’s Alien Tampon isn’t actually a feature film yet, and this trailer was created as an amazing proof of concept that will hopefully get enough investors involved to get it expanded into a full flick. To be clearer, Alien Tampon NEEDS TO BE A REAL MOVIE!

We have spent months (im)patiently waiting for 20th Century Fox to finally reveal the first look at the new rebooted version of The Fantastic Four, and while the film’s debut trailer is on its way, today we may have a sneak peek at what to expect costume-wise:

Justified Films went a little hashtag crazy to say that it is a leaked image of The Thing from The Fantastic Four. You can tell that there is a lot of green screen going on behind ol’ rock head, so this could be the stand in that visual effects artists will use when they digitally add in Ben Grimm.

After all the body horror, brutal gore, and nightmare-inspiring creature effects, The Thing winds down to a chilling finish. MacReady and his colleague Childs (Keith David) are all that remains of their crew. Having blown up the base in hopes of killing this heinous killer beast, the two — already caked in ice and snow—shiver and essentially await death. But the question lingers—is one of them The Thing?

“I don’t know if that’s going to happen – it was really expensive, because it was going to have to shoot in Las Vegas”, van Heijningen Jr. told Moviehole while out promoting The Thing (2011). Warner Bros. still, reportedly, holds the rights to the project, but it appears to be mired in pre-production hell as Snyder bangs away on the studio’s Superman reboot and van Heijningen contemplates his next move.

When deciding whether or not something on the internet is cool, sometimes all you need to do is look at it in terms of its parts. If you have something that's awesome, and you combine it with something else that's awesome, the result is something that is awesome x2. It's a formula that has worked for centuries, and has given us amazing things like popcorn and movies, beer and sports, and peanut butter and jelly.

For decades, Hollywood’s go-to move when it came to extending the life of a popular franchise was greenlighting a sequel. But with lackluster installments like Lethal Weapon 4, The Matrix: Revolutions and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull-- among many, many others-- methodically killing the strategy over the years, something had to change

From Jack Burton to Snake Plissken, Kurt Russell and John Carpenter constructed some truly iconic roles together and R.J. MacReady in 1982’s The Thing is most definitely included. There’s been talk for years about a remake of Escape From New York, but the idea of someone else playing the Plissken role is unfathomable.

Holding a fake gun on a set isn’t scary. Sure, there are things that could potentially go wrong (Research: Brandon Lee), but for the most part it’s pretty safe. A flamethrower, on the other hand, is a completely different story. You’re walking around with a pilot flame and a backpack filled with gas, and if those things get too close together it’s curtains for you. But don’t tell that to Mary Elizabeth Winstead; she’ll just laugh it off.

Still, maybe Hollywood is just going about this all wrong. Making another Thing movie in the same vein as Carpenter's classic can't help but draw comparisons, and most likely suffer from them. So why not take the core concept and explore a different genre? Like, say, a swingin' big band musical? I think it would go...a little something like this...

It’s week two of the Rotten Challenge verse Nate, a.k.a. this dude who showed up in the Comments section. Week one was a clear victory. Week two, not so much, but man if it wasn’t close. I’m even tempted to call it a tie (but I’m sure he won’t want to). This week we’ve got bird watching, feet loosening, aliens invading and Doug prevailing

Helping to bring job to Louisiana by filming in New Orleans can only help a feature that, sight unseen, will be looked at for potentially exploiting Katrina for drama. When it comes to stories set in a post-Katrina environment, it’s damn near impossible to top Spike Lee’s compelling documentaries. But it’s possible that a dramatic narrative can be drawn from this natural tragedy, so long as the script treats each situation with the right amount of respect and reverence.

I feel somewhat strange about suggesting that people should watch uncensored trailers for the upcoming The Thing. While red band and uncensored previews always give the audience a clearer picture about tone and content, The Thing is a movie that relies on the audience not knowing what's going to happen next.

Area 52 has an unmistakable similarity to The Thing in that there is alien mayhem at a secret base in the Antarctic region, but the comparisons end there. Area 52 is run by the government and used to store items that are “out of this world”, so to speak. Run by a small group of government rejects sent there because they weren’t useful anywhere else, when an alien presence hatches without their knowing and starts rampaging. As some of the crew are sort of on the crazy side, expect Area 52 to come with a healthy serving of comedy with the alien horror.

Universal has been marketing The Thing for nearly a year, starting last fall when the film was scheduled for a spring release date, and now again earnest as it prepares to actually hit theaters on October 14. I guess at a certain point they had to start raising the stakes in the marketing, showing audiences more of what they'd be paying to see-- blood and guts and special effects, that is

While you're probably in the midst of planning your alien assimilation party in preparation for the remake/prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, also titled The Thing, put down the severed-head-with-legs centerpiece for a moment and have a gander at the film’s latest TV spot.

Among the movies that’ll likely get us into the Halloween spirit this year is The Thing, which from the sound of it, is more of a prequel than a full-blown remake of the popular 1982 John Carpenter horror film. Check out a clip from The Thing ahead!

Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a researcher in way over her heard, and featuring Joel Edgerton and Eric Christian Olsen among others as he crew working with her, it's a pretty familiar take on the "people trapped in a space with an awful thing" horror genre, just with a slightly bigger monster twist

I’m excited simply because it looks pretty good and so does the movie’s new official teaser poster, which we’ve got for you, right here. )ay close attention to the fingers on the left hand of that figure standing in the snow. What I like best about the poster is the way it instantly harkens back to the original, now iconic 1982 poster.

The trailer starts off in New York, of all places, where Winstead's tough scientist character Kate Lloyd is convinced by Eric Christian Olsen's character to join a Norwegian research expedition in Antarctica

If isn’t already obvious, today is a good day if you’re excited for the upcoming film The Thing, a prequel to John Carpenter’s classic of the same name from 1982. Back in June, I was given the incredible

When it was first announced that production was starting on a prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, fans were outraged. A classic of the horror genre, the move suggested images of studio execs lighting

As the male lead in Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s prequel to The Thing, Joel Edgerton has some serious shoes to fill. Regardless of how different his character, pilot Sam Carter, may be, he is destined to be

Thanks to Ridley Scott and James Cameron, the bar has been set for heroines in the sci-fi genre with Ellen Ripley: She sucked the xenomorph out of the airlock in Alien and killed the queen with the power loader in

Before I visited the set for Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing this past summer in Toronto, I worried, like many fans of the original, that this was simply another example

The actor has joined the cast of the horror prequel to play "Derek," a role given no further explanation. Shooting is already underway in Toronto with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton in the leads

We still don't know exactly what Moore's take on the story, which originated as a novel and is most famous as the 1982 John Carpenter movie, but the simple tale of some Antarctica researchers terrorized by an alien being definitely has room for reinvention